Living Room Space
by TerraCotta Bones
Summary: Postseries. Because there's a couch in her living room, and between Ed's return and a few drinks she's slipped. Because he would fit, if he were there. Edwin.
1. 01 Machine Language

**Living Room Space**

**TerraCotta Bones**

**Spoilers: **End-of-series. Don't spoil it for yourself, readers!

**Disclaimer: **Yadda yadda yadda….FMA/copyright/claims/whatever/attorneys/affiliates/producers/Konstantine/Something Corporate.

**Pairing: **Edwin, of course.

**A/N: **This was inspired by the song "Konstantine" by Something Corporate. (Find it! Listen to it! It's beautiful!) But I thought I would try a reformed version of the traditional songfic.

**Chapter 1: Machine Language**

_I can't imagine all the people that you know  
and the places that you go  
when the lights are turned down low_

_And I don't understand all the things you've seen  
But I'm slipping in between   
You and your big dreams _

Winry retched into the toilet bowl, clutching the basin, knees on the tiled bathroom floor.

_What a terrible way to end an evening, _she mused. _Look where I am now, Grandma! At the top of my game, interning with an automail surgeon at a Rush Valley hospital. Rush Valley! The Boomtown of the Broken Down!_

She wiped her mouth with a paper towel, then convulsed with the next wave of vomit. Her head spun with the smell and the sound of flushing water.

She thought her white toilet might be turning orange.

_Ah. Peachy keen. _

Next time, she wouldn't have quite so many drinks. She wouldn't ignore her colleague's hand on her, and she wouldn't even try to have fun afterward. It was no formula for a good time – a little molestation, a bit more alcohol, some low lights and strangled bar music and people having way too much fun without her.

Her head pounded. Tomorrow, maybe she would jam her wrench four inches into Phil's skull for rubbing up on her butt. Fuckin' pervert.

Tonight, her bathroom was clean and cool and just small enough to close in on her.

She rinsed her mouth out, twice, three times, and slid to the floor, flat on her back. Life kicked her in the stomach. The tiles – all twenty-three of them, she'd counted – chilled her skin through her clothes.

She waited to feel better; she opened her eyes, closed them again, blinked back the blurriness in her vision. Ceiling, wall, shower, toilet, mirror, cabinet, sink.

She was not quite sure that everything would be fine in the morning. Besides the hangover.

And the idea of working a twelve-hour shift in an emergency room while she was shit stupid with coffee and painkillers didn't have the shine she thought it would.

Winry dragged a hand across her eyes. When her breath started to catch, she stood up – if she broke down now it would be into a cesspool of throw-up – anchoring her hands on the sink to pull herself up, moving slow to make sure nothing would slip out from under her.

The mirror glared balefully at her, or she to it perhaps – her hair was scrambled in every direction, her skin was pale and sweaty; her makeup had smudged and evaporated, her clothes looked rumpled. She looked exactly like she'd just spent a night puking. Early morning, actually. A clock pointed out that it was 3:13 in the morning. Perfect. Sick, stupid, psycho, silly with coffee.

"Lucky me," she muttered, and began pulling pins out of her hair. She switched on her shower full blast. Maybe the steam would help the goosebumps on her arms.

She glanced at the toilet and flushed it, half drunk enough to be only halfway disgusted.

It felt like her face would heat up and melt off if she jettisoned any more of her insides, or if that space in her chest wobbled off-balance any more.

The mirror was too big. She could see the upper half of her body in it, and all the wreckage that used to be beauty. Or plainness.

She undid all the buttons on her blouse – slowly – and slid out of her skirt. She pulled her boots from her stinging feet, and rolled off her pantyhose – wondered why she'd even thought to wear pantyhose for a night like this. It all fell in a heap on the floor, and she stared at it for a moment, wondering their similarities, her and this pile of nothing. Shaking her head, and regretting it, she detached the last twenty pins snagged into the brambles of her hair, and wiped her face with her clammy hands.

_Look at you._

The steam from the shower began to fog the mirror – but she could still see everything. She could stare, blearily, at her naked reflection.

She certainly wasn't fat, or even plump, but she was thick with muscle – lumpy with muscle. She wished she was all clean lines – steel, pulley, wire, iron hand. Perhaps that was the problem, that she was thick with things – muscle, or hatred, or love. Maybe she overanalyzed.

Maybe everybody has an ugly, beautiful daughter.

She wondered if her parents ever imagined her like this. It probably hadn't occurred to them.

She wished – she wished she could be perfect. Better. Iron hand. Steel, or steeled heart.

Her reflection disappeared in the white burn of her hot shower.

She pictured the vomit in her toilet in her mind, and nearly puked again.

When she stepped under the scalding water, it felt like her body was on fire; surely her hair was singed; surely her skin blistered under the heat. But she didn't turn it down. _Don't be so easy on yourself. _This was a way to scrub misery out. Hot hot water. She had to try.

Her vision blurred and darkened, for a moment, and she thought of ripping all her goddamn clothes to shreds. Then the curtains, and pillows, and apartment.

She wondered, out of the blue, if Ed and Al were going through something like this right now.

_They're probably at some inn in the middle of nowhere, _she thought sourly. She pictured warm, bright rooms with friendly attendants; vast libraries; famous alchemists; fame. Are you the Fullmetal Alchemist? The hero of the people? You're back?

Briefly, she had an inarticulate feeling of envy.

The state should have declared Ed dead instead of missing. Then he'd have made even more of a comeback.

And where was she? The top of her game at Rush Valley? She should've been out of here by now, famous.

She should've fixed the plumbing in this shower so it didn't pulsate between a harsh spray and a weak one. Her face heated up again. The tiles were moldy, too.

She accidentally twisted the shower knob out of its base in the wall.

"Damnit!" She twisted it back in, then rubbed her face, leaned her head against the wall. "Edward!"

_Why aren't you here? _

And now, even better, she was ugly and angry at the same time.

_  
It's always you   
In my big dreams_

_And you tell me that it's over  
Wake up lying in a patch of four leaf clovers  
And you're restless, and I'm naked  
You've gotta get out_

_You can't stand to see me shaking_

She walked into her darkened bedroom later, after aspirin and a nightgown and dried hair, and snapped the picture frame next to her bed face down. She knew its details without seeing it – it was her and Ed and Al in the Dublin marketplace a few weeks after Ed's return. Sig took the picture.

She looked so young and worldly in it, she thought, with her long winter trench coat and her hair spilled all over her shoulders. Her smile stretched across her whole face. Al looked rosy and alive and happy. "Family photo!" That's what he'd said.

Ed looked older than the both of them. His skin didn't have much color, and his eyes were a little toneless. He was so tired, his left arm snagged on Winry's right, and wilted.

The new Ed had aged more than the three years he'd spent as a missing person.

But of course the picture didn't capture any of this. Looking at the glossy polychrome paper was just a way of remembering.

Tragically, Winry found that in the months since Ed had been back she couldn't imagine him any longer, even when she tried. After he disappeared, she'd invented beautiful stories and terrible nightmares, her hopes and fears all wrapped up in mental adventures and speculations; now that he was back, she was at a dead end.

She'd put him in her dreams, right next to her automail, so living without him wouldn't be so bad. Now his life without her in it pulled a blank, and she couldn't reason it out with any medical science or human philosophy.

You can't pull justification out of nowhere, Granny used to say.

But justification for what? The fact that he wasn't here with her in Rush Valley? That she hadn't heard from him in months? She'd never asked him to come. She'd never thought to ask; she'd always assumed life would be just fine without him, now that she knew he was safe.

They'd lived so long apart, her and Ed, even when they could've been together, so it seemed natural to follow diverging paths. It wasn't like she needed him just to survive; life was still life, even without him; she could whimper and dry her eyes and move on if it was required. When he came back, finally, after three years and the tide crested, it seemed alright, normal even, to leave. She'd been prepared for the worst, and it was over. The normal lives they'd all looked for could finally begin – and neither Ed nor Al asked her to keep traveling with them, so nothing stopped her.

That was a few months ago. Maybe she wanted him to chase her, or something, which was unreasonable because he never had and probably ever would. He was too selfish; he was where he needed to be and nowhere else, which was why he only visited her, back when he visited her, when something was broken. He was too selfish for anything else. But that, she supposed, was what made him so strong, and what got Al back to normal – eventually.

She thought herself quite selfless – pathetic? – for letting him go.

Maybe she was just terrified that, this time, he was slipping away from her for good – he'd left for three years, but he hadn't been able to come back; now he could see her any time he wanted, and didn't.

The space in her chest burned, twisted like her churning stomach, when she thought of him. She hadn't seen it coming, not at all. The hard line of his jaw; the pulled tissue and the scars on his shoulder; his loud, wide, lazy mouth. Ed: arms, legs, hair, chest, ass, head. Ed.

She wished she'd figured it out sooner. Now she was poisoned by – what? Futility? Fear? Resentment? But for whom?

_How could I just leave? _

There is definitely no purity in love.

A tiny, tinny part of her wondered if Ed would ever come back, or if he would travel until something broke, and leave as soon as it was fixed. He was selfish enough for that – but stupid enough, too? Would he see her, and figure it out? Should she let him, or should she be quiet? Were there other things to be concerned about?

That spool of heartstrings had a long thread, and she'd tied it to the photo next to her bed. She'd been one-upped before – by alchemy, then a stone; she could ponder déjà vu, and it wouldn't be cynicism or bitterness, just reality.

But why should she cut off her legs now? Or cut out her heart? Just to love? It couldn't be that debilitating, just to love. But she wouldn't know.

Perhaps she was just frightened that it would be the same, and he would never ever come to Rush Valley, the same way he'd never come to Resembol.

She was afraid that it wasn't his fault, that she couldn't even convince herself that it was in some way his fault, that she had brought this upon herself. _It's my fault. _She should've made him come with her. She should've followed him. _Why didn't I just go with you?_

She should've made sure he spent the night throwing up his stomach and all the alcohol and bar food inside it, because she couldn't stand to be alone in it.

The blurriness in her eyes spilled all over her cheeks, like the milk he would pour onto the grass as a child. Back when she knew him step for step. When he wasn't glare-bright in her heart. She pulled the covers over her head and wiped a hand across her face. How could she make such a wrong turn – how could she get everything she wanted, pay off every debt, and drown?

When, in the gaseous, volcanic beginnings of life, did love become its opposite? How could a stupid thing like a burning, not-at-all pure love like hers for him turn into a thorn?

It was her own life, and she didn't fit in it.

A toast to dark bars and her third lesson in: people are made of vomit and yuck.

Or it was his life, and she didn't fit in it, even where she used to do so well.

She was living without him, one more time. It shouldn't have felt so different.

_Could you let me go?_

_I didn't think so_

**A/N: **Thank you, Something Corporate. To all anime viewers, Rush Valley is called the Boomtown of the Broken Down in the FMA manga because it attracted all the half-limbed soldiers from the old wars (thus an automail boom).

Edited 9/29/06 for grammar.


	2. 02 Atlas Man

**SPOILERS: **If you don't know how the series ends, the secrets of the Stone, or you haven't seen the movie, then PLEASE don't read this. It's so much more fun to watch it unspoiled. (And by golly there are some spoilers in here.)

**A/N: **Um…sorry it took so long to edit. But hey – it's over twice as long as the last chapter!

* * *

**Living Room Space**

**TerraCotta Bones**

**Chapter 2: Atlas Man**

**

* * *

**_And you don't wanna be here in the future  
So you say the present's just a pleasant interruption to the past  
And you don't wanna look much closer_

* * *

Al swirled his lemonade with his straw, and stared at his hands. When he was little, he'd cut his finger, and the scar was still there, a little white line on rosy skin. He'd been cutting the wood Ed had squirmed his way out of chopping. 

The clink of the ice cubes against his glass was soothing, comparatively.

He wasn't quite listening to the argument anymore.

Ed roared, or Russell roared, or they roared at each other, and Ed's fist flew to almost an inch away from Russell's face before Russell bolted out of his seat.

"Call me short one more time!" Ed yelled against Russell's screeched, "What the hell, Ed?"

They glared at each other, Russell stiff as an iron bar and Ed curling into a snarl. He was rooted to a rickety bar stool and sinking onto the counter, drunk enough to topple. His fist swung heavily at his side.

Their pitch and moan, Russell and Ed's, squealed through the bar, broiling and stewing with the raucous gamblers at the pool tables and the lurching, rumbling regulars in the back. In their corner at the front of the bar, the light was dim, and patchy. Ed narrowed his eyes.

"I think you've had too much," Russell muttered, red in the face. He flexed his hands.

"You've got another thing coming, bro."

Russell grabbed Ed by the collar and heaved him out of his seat, up into the air. "Yeah, and here it is—"

"Brother!" Fletcher yelled, catching his brother's arm. "Don't!"

Al blinked, and tried to pull his brother off. "Ed, really, this is too much—"

"Get off me, Al!"

Al stopped, his arms half-bent to draw his brother away. He exchanged glances with Russell and Fletcher; Fletcher looked apprehensive. Russell shook his brother off. He spared Ed a scowl, and then shifted his gaze to Al, accusing, if only for a second. Al stared back, startled.

"I'm outta here," Russell snapped. He threw a few coins on the counter. When he stormed through the door, one of the beaded chandeliers nearby quivered.

Ed sneered and sat down, and threw back the rest of his drink. The bartender cut them all warnings with his eyes.

Fletcher sighed, and walked over to his chair for his belongings. They were the same age now, he and Al, with almost the same brother. Al massaged his knotted neck.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's not your fault," Fletcher murmured. He fingered his glass. "Why don't we let our brothers cool off for a while? We can meet up again in a day or two."

Al gestured to the bartender for a bill. "I don't think so. We've got to leave tomorrow."

Maybe his brother would shape up in Central.

"Oh—" Fletcher took a drink, "—I've been waiting to hear that," he said, softer, into his glass.

"What?"

Fletcher looked apologetic. Al waited without expression. "C'mere," Fletcher said, motioning him over. "I just mean that – I think you should take your brother home."

"That's what I'm doing," Al replied sharply. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and rubbed his face. Red marks striped already flushed skin. "Sorry."

Fletcher shook his head. "No, I mean you should take him home. Like – Resembol, was it?" He flicked his blue eyes to the trench-coated drunk with his golden hair falling into his glass. "Something's wrong."

Alphonse paused, and looked at the floor – worn wooden planks with gum mashed into the grain, and leather scuffs layered over vomit stains and boot mud. He kicked at the floor; his whole body ached from only three hours in a bar. "What do you mean?"

"Well he's – not the way he used to be. Maybe this is like when my brother and I tried to make the Philosopher's Stone out of red water."

Black paint was chipping off of the bar counter. Al's glass – sweet sweet lemonade – looked far away on the other side of Ed. "I don't remember that," he said quietly. "Remember?"

"Right." Al watched his eyes scatter around the room. "Well, you know the story I guess." Al nodded, and Fletcher continued, "My brother kept going because he thought he was fulfilling our father's dreams, but I knew we were just poisoning the whole town. You were the one who told me to stand up to him."

Al didn't respond, but flicked at the peeling paint. This was another story Ed did not want to tell him; he'd only learned it when it spilled out from the Tringhams in the first days of their visit.

"We were under the delusion that everything was fine."

"I'm not delusional," Al said. He stared at his hands – fleshy and pink. "Are you saying that we're doing something wrong?"

"No." Fletcher finished his drink, then laid out a few coins. "But your exact words to me were, 'If your brother's doing something you know is wrong, then just be brave and stop him.' Don't you think this situation kind of resonates?"

_I thought I was imagining things. _

Al managed a half-smile.

_How close did you have to look? _

"You remember that, after – what – four years? I don't even remember that."

"Someone has to." Fletcher smiled and slid into his jacket, and Al listened to his footfalls as he pushed through the door. A wave of heat swept in as the door swung.

Al stared at his hands – fleshy and pink, scarred white in childhood. He wondered what had happened to them in the five years he couldn't remember.

When Ed returned all those months ago and the two of them climbed out of the rubble beneath Central, Al could have died from happiness. After three years, he was free to imagine life as it should've been – he could go be a real alchemist, not just a boy looking for his brother. They could both go back to Resembol and be happy again, proud to stand next to each other. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever done, his simple wishing. Ed had been ecstatic to see his younger brother in the flesh. He'd ruffled his hair, socked him in the arm, stared at him like he was a fish out of water. Maybe a boy out of armor wasn't so different.

Now Al could only see the fuzz on his brother's jaw, the automail, and the thick, callused skin on his hand. Ed was almost a full head taller than him, and his hair was so long, right down to the middle of his back – he didn't braid it anymore, like in all the pictures. He wore gloves and long-sleeves and pants all the time, even in summer. He looked like the fifteen-year-old pictures of their father, with his ponytail. He'd had gained four years on Al, and turned into a man.

Al's simplest of wishes now was to remember his years in the suit of armor, so that he would recognize his brother. They had eight years missing between them, and nothing to say. All the stories he should've been privy to, horror and fairytale, he'd lost, and Ed wouldn't tell him anything.

_Curiosity killed the cat, Al, _he'd say. Then his gold eyes would darken, and he'd add, _You can't even imagine it. The truth behind all truths. _

The truth behind all truths. Teacher mentioned something about that.

Al didn't remember anything else.

Curiosity killed the cat. So what? Heart disease killed Trisha Elric. They still tried to bring her back.

He didn't even remember. All he could think of was being pulled into the vortex of their rebound, then waking up in a giant ruined ballroom. What happened in between? Ed said their transmutation failed, and Mom never came back – but what about the rest of his life? What did he do for five years? He qualified, didn't he, for that responsibility? For his own life?

Ed thought he was protecting his little brother. Something about becoming a State Alchemist, the murder of a man named Maes Hughes, and the rebound; Al was the fly in the web, caught in the dark, and Ed trotted down any line he wanted. The alchemy that once brought them together fogged, and whatever his brother had done kept them on either side, shadowed.

_What do you look at when you're not looking at me? When you look at me?_

On Ed's curved back was a heavy, heady science; on his automail limbs was a sin; in his chest was a heart, Al was sure. Scar-sore and red. He'd read the book time enough to know that, but in his absence whole chapters had been written, and deleted.

Al walked over to Ed and sat next to him. "You got something you want to say to me?"

Ed didn't look at him, didn't even move. "Nope."

_Nothing, Brother?_

Al tapped his fingers on the counter, three times, four. A ceiling fan above him spun the air with its blades. Sleep and drink hung in the bar like fat honeybees on petals, buzzing. "We've gotta go, Brother."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Al paid the bill in front of him. "C'mon, Brother, we have to pack for the train tomorrow." He pulled the glass out of Ed's hand. "We're going to Central, remember?"

Ed crossed his arms on the counter and laid his forehead on their cushion. "I don't want to go Central anymore."

Al looked at the liquors lining the wall behind the bar, saw red, gold, brown, clear, green; glasses displayed like collector's trophies. He thought of a nine-year-old Ed squirming out of chopping firewood, sticking his tongue out. The warmth this place was supposed to provide didn't reach him. "You can't drown your woes in alcohol, Brother."

"Who says I have woes?"

Al rolled his eyes and shoved him in the arm. "Get up. You look pathetic."

Perhaps Russell was right to accuse him of wrongdoing. Ed was his brother. _Take care of each other. _Her simplest, her only wish.

Ed grumbled incoherently. Hair stuck up from his head.

"Yeah, you do look pathetic," Al said. He tried to help his brother into his jacket, but Ed shook him off.

"I can do it myself," he snarked.

Al glanced at the bartender as they left, and guessed that they wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. He pushed the door open before his brother walked into it, and when he stepped out, the door whooshed back and forth behind him. Opening, and closing.

Outside, oily street lamps broke the night, and late August heat threatened to suffocate its trespassers. Ed's broad shoulders stooped.

_Who makes the world that you carry?_

There was a place in Resembol, and in Rush Valley, that was hospital to its returning children.

You should take my brother home.

* * *

'_Cause you're afraid to find out all this hope  
__You had sent into the sky by now had crashed  
And it did  
Because of me_

* * *

In a town like this, he bet that the stars looked great in the middle of the night. But he couldn't tell. 

Ed bent over a railing and threw up into someone's bushes.

"Ed!" Al squawked. Ed could just seehis brother's mouth drop.

"C'est la vie," he remarked, coughing. He continued with, "I can't believe I just said that."

"What?"

"Nothing." The words slithered out of his mouth like – like dribble through puffy, beat-up lips. Like vomit on a tongue.

He threw up again. This time he didn't make it to the bush, and multi-colored barf flew onto the sidewalk.

Soon his head would spin off and land somewhere across the street, where he would have to search for it, blind and headless.

Honestly, he'd hoped for more when he and his brother arrived in Xenotime a few days ago. Lemon pie would have been nice, a few visits to old acquaintances – he could ignore the topic of Mugyar and the red water – but then the trees hadn't grown back yet, and the gold hadn't returned, and Russell Tringham was still Russell Tringham, and he and that punk just weren't meant to be.

Maybe he should've been pleasanter – or not a complete asshole, as Al had reminded him every night. Maybe he should've stayed sober.

Naturally, thoughts like that ran up the puke.

"God, you're a mess," Al groaned, and took his brother's arm in order to drag him along.

He tried to wriggle free. Failing that, he quipped, "Don't use the Lord's name in vain, little brother!"

He gagged on his own words; pictured a cathedral with a rose window. Streets with cobblestones, England and Germany.

"Ed, shut up!" Al shook him. Ed could feel his brother's glare on the back of his head. "Since when do you care about God?"

"You live in a psycho-religious place like Europe for a while, and you pick up a few things. Lemme go."

There it was again – the tightness in his chest – the line he could never cross, the tale he would never tell. A cathedral with a rose window, and an old bespectacled man with a golden beard. This place called Europe where he'd been imprisoned for three years; this place that lived outside the blushing naiveté floating in his little brother's face.

Al nearly dropped him on the sidewalk. "If you weren't falling down drunk, I'd leave you behind."

"Good thing I'm not falling down, then," Ed retorted. Then he tripped, and retched over the side of the curb.

Al rolled his eyes. "How can you have that much in your stomach?"

Ed didn't answer. He stayed crouched on the ground, dead certain that his entire body was being sucked up through his esophagus and onto the asphalt road. Maybe the roar in his head and his chest would go with it.

Honestly, he'd hoped things would go a little better.

He closed his eyes, and wished he could sink into the ground.

The truth behind all truths.

Life isn't always better than death. Sidewalk is always better than drunk. He wiped his eyes.

Al sat down next to him, a good distance from any possible vomit spray. Ed heard his shoes crunch the gravel in the road, and hoped, ridiculously, that when he sat down it was with a straight back. When did he become his brother's father?

He threw up, and wished he hadn't gotten drunk.

His vision was swimming he was so nauseous, and Al was angry at him, again. The acid in his throat sizzled like comeuppance.

"You getting tired of me, Al?" he whispered.

Al didn't even hesitate. "You're my brother, Ed," he said, just as softly.

_Like a brother means anything, _Ed thought bitterly, and not bitterly – not unkindly. He wondered who he was upset with – not Al. Never. _But it was our only reason. _

The ground wanted to swallow him in, whole. Piece by piece. And he would go under and not come up.

The curb beckoned to him.

A ripple ran through his body, and another gulp of breakfast, lunch, and dinner washed onto the road. Under the pool of light from the street lamp, it looked violet. Strange. He wouldn't remember it in the morning.

The last time he'd done this, he was German.

_Did you know I lived with Dad while I was in Europe? _

"We just gonna wait here until I start dry heaving?"

"That or sober," Al said, looking at his hands.

Ed blinked, hard, and stared at his brother to stay awake. _Alphonse. _In three years, Al looked just like he'd imagined, considering that he hadn't known he would be thirteen when they finally met again. His hair was short, unruly, and burnished gold; he hadn't seen those ocean-gray eyes in eight years; he looked like their mother – slender, and leaner rather than thicker and broader, like their father. His face was round, thin, and soft where Ed's was hard. He held his body like a cat – gentle, and unobtrusive. He only came up to Ed's chin, but that, unfortunately, would change soon.

In Europe, Ed couldn't have dreamed of more. He'd spent half his life trying to get the boy in front of him back to the boy in front of him. It was all he ever wanted.

And Al didn't remember.

They'd used the Philosopher's Stone, the one fueled on human lives, to bring each other back. To return what they'd so foolishly lost. Ed had become a State Alchemist, had killed people, and the Gate had swallowed him like a dead soul, like alcohol or cement in the sidewalk. Worse than that. They'd sold the world just to save themselves, or almost – and _voilà, _the product of their sacrifices.

_Voilà. _Right.

He coughed bile out of his throat.

_I'm glad you don't remember. _

He saw no lines in his brother's face, no shadows, no demons. If they hadn't tried, so long ago – if they hadn't tried, maybe his brother would have grown up to be this boy in front of him, as innocent as he could ever wish.

Equivalent exchange finally gave him what he wanted, so to speak. Only, he was alone, again, in half a lifetime of catastrophe.

Homunculi. Mother. Automail chimera Roy Mustang Hughes Nina Shou Tucker military Lab Five Scar Greed Dante Lust; every eye-opening Gate crossing that ever destroyed his life. Nina. Hughes. His father.

Europe, and eight years, and nightmares.

There were places to lock up the things he didn't want to think about. He just had to find them. Then Al could wonder for the rest of his life about the reality of what happened after their transmutation rebounded. Ed had tried for so long to take the world on his shoulders. Now he could.

Al shoved a handkerchief in his face, and he took it and wiped his mouth. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Al said, and leaned back with his palms on the sidewalk. "You know, Fletcher said something to me."

Ed managed to sit up. He only heard half of what his brother said, then he tilted his head up to look at the stars, and tried vainly to count the pinpricks. His brain was clouded.

_In America, we call that the Big Dipper. _

He knew these constellations. Nothing new or unfamiliar about them. A little boy's shapes in the sky.

_Mind the crab grass. It's a weed. _

He knew the kinds of grass – he knew long, sweeping fields and wind and herds of sheep. Resembol. After three years in Europe, he was good at it. All he had to do was close his eyes and there she'd be – Resembol. Long fields, and his once-upon-a-time of a childhood.

"He said that we should go home."

Ed grunted, blinked. Somewhere along the line, the fabric split into threads. He put his head in his hands. The line he couldn't cross – which side was he on? Somehow he couldn't imagine standing with Al, oblivious, looking over the divide. In the valley, he stood blinded, looking up.

_Welcome to my humble abode, Mister Elric! Oh, this is my baby daughter, Lucy. _

His name was Oberth, a German scientist.

Nina. Hughes. Baby pictures on the bulletin board in Winry's kitchen.

Why did he decide to miss Europe now, of all times? Why did he miss Europe at all? He'd spent the whole time partway insane, dreaming. He didn't remember half of anything, or tried not to, but here were the words and faces, planted next to his alchemy and ghosts. The valley of the shadow of – he didn't remember it now.

_I hope you find what you're looking for, Elric. _

"I hated it," he muttered. He wiped his eyes.

"Hated what?" Al's hearing was too good.

He wanted to black-out and wake up without his heartbeat slamming in his chest, or in his throat. Everything he saw shimmered, like a mirage.

How do you erase? How do you put it away where you can't fall all over it anymore?

"Back there. I mean – you know – when I was gone."

Ed tried to lean back, and he kept leaning and leaning, and he kept staring up and up, and he would've fallen over if Al hadn't caught him. It was a quick and steady hand behind his back.

"Watch it, Brother." Al paused, for a moment. "Are you even listening to me?"

"You think we should go home."

All he'd heard was _home. _He would've liked to stand up at this point, but there was nothing left in his legs. He could sleep right here, he was so tired. Tired.

_Edward, if you sleep with your prostheses attached you'll regret it later._

It took him sixteen years to meet his father, and longer to understand him. It shouldn't have taken so long. That bastard. Ed never did find out why he left them. He wondered if the man had any regrets about what he'd done.

Ed wondered about his own regrets.

Strange that he would be just as powerless for answers in Amestris as Germany. Ironic.

"So what do you think?" Al said.

"You mean Resembol?" Ed queried. "I don't really want to go back there." Just goes to show how much a burned-down house can burn down.

"Why not? It might be nice to take a break for a while."

"Al, how can we take a break when we're not doing anything?" Ed put a hand to his forehead, and felt his heartbeat through his temples. "Besides, the only thing in Resembol is an old hag and her dog. Why would we go there?"

"Don't talk about Aunty Pinako that way, Brother." More curtly, Al continued, "And we are doing something. We're alchemists. We're researching."

Ed hazarded, though he didn't mean to, a laugh. "Yeah. But for what?"

Al glared at him. "It was your idea in the first place, Ed! We're looking for ways that alchemy can help people. We're going to restore alchemy's good name, because obviously nobody knows how wonderful it can be. That's what we're doing. If you're gonna drag me all over the country and get into fights all the time, could you please at least pretend to stick to your goals!"

Ed groaned and looked away, glowering. Al let out an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms.

Ed knew Al wanted to go home, that he stayed with him because he couldn't bear to go away after so long a separation. But Ed couldn't stay in Resembol. He would never go back to the military. There was nothing there. It was just – he hadn't made any plans beforehand, about what to do after his return – it just never entered his head. He'd only got as far as going around to Resembol and Dublin to say, "We're back!" and then – what? Live? After he finished the first part, he was empty-handed.

So when he searched, he found alchemy.

He reasoned he could help the people this way, and reignite his glorious reputation, sort of, minus the fugitive part. He reasoned he could make up for the things he'd ignored as a State Alchemist because he'd had more important things to do, and be the Hero of the People once more.

Perhaps, though, he just wanted to remind himself of the good alchemy could do. It didn't just hurt people, or turn grief and love into a sin, a creature of evil with his mother's face. He remembered a time when Al himself had to be reminded of the same things.

_Hey, Al, do you remember the Hughes? Maes, Gracia, Elysia? How about Psiren and that crazy detective? No? Well how about Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Greed? The Fuhrer? Nothing? _

He could lock it up inside him. He would protect his little brother.

"I still think we should take a break, Brother."

A long time ago, he decided not to tell Winry anything either. She wouldn't know about all the crazy shit he and Al got into, and nobody they knew would know about her. It was witness protection, plain and simple.

Besides, he knew what Al would be like if he remembered, or if he told him what happened. He knew that his brother's charm and blush would crumble, and people would see in him the wreckage that they saw in Ed; he couldn't have that. Better yet to preserve, for as long as he could, an Alphonse Elric who did not know what it was like not to feel, or touch, or live.

It was like the Al that lived in the suit of armor never existed. It used to be his worst fear.

Now he had equivalent exchange – his peace for his little brother's. Al was Al again, human and wholesome. It took five years.

_I'll do whatever it takes to fix things. _

It took such a long time. He'd been such an idiot, back then. Maybe he still was. He wondered if he was pleased with the results.

"Brother?"

"Al, why are you asking me questions right now? I'm frickin' intoxicated, and we are sittung – sitting – on a goddamn curb in the middle of the night. The hotel's probably locked, and our train comes at eight. You gotta have better things to do right now."

Al huffed. "It's one-thirty," he said. "And the hotel is not locked, you're just trying to scare me. For crying out loud, I'm not letting you get drunk ever again."

Ed felt his headache splinter into the next level. "I'm gonna hold you to that."

Al threw a pebble across the street, and after a little while grumbled, "I think we should go see Winry."

Ed closed his eyes, and wished he had something cool to put across his face.

"Brother?"

Winry.

"Why would we do that?"

"Because if you don't want to go to Resembol, then she's next on the list," Al declared, "and if you stop me, I'll break your arm. Then we really will have to go see her. She'll hit you with her wrench, too."

Ed tried to glare back. "What are you talking about, Al? You know she'll just hit you if you do anything to her precious masterpiece. Why do you even want to go at all?"

She could've stayed with them. She traveled with them for two months right after she finished with his automail reinstallment, and then she left to go back to her internship in Rush Valley. But she could've stayed.

And she wasn't magical; she didn't have the fairy dust to lift the weight off his heart. She had Rush Valley. They didn't need her, or her toolbox or, even less, her apple pie.

He wondered when the trees would grow back in Xenotime.

He missed her, but that wasn't so out-of-the-ordinary. He'd missed her before, for years. It was just so strange to be the one she left behind, and not the other way around. He didn't much like it, but he supposed it was karma come back to haunt him.

Besides, he didn't need to see her now that he was so proficient with illusion. She was different than the girl he'd envisioned in Germany; she wasn't sixteen, and she didn't live in Resembol anymore – her hair was shorter, her skirts were longer, she was a real woman, and a real mechanic – but, not to kill the cliché, she was always with him. For as long as he could remember. At nineteen she was as feisty as ever, and as caring; she was the girl he'd imagined, only older. And she left him, not the other way around.

He recalled being surprised.

He wondered if he'd thought the three of them would be together again, after he'd returned from Europe.

Al stood up, silhouetted by the glow of the street lamp. He gave Ed a shadowy stare, then murmured, "If you won't tell me, then maybe you'll tell her." He started to walk away.

"Tell her what? Hey, wait!" Ed never told Winry anything. That was the point. And if he told her what he'd been doing during his search for the Stone – she'd probably smack him with a death-toothed, anvil-sized, saw-edged Wrench-from-Hell and demand to know why he didn't tell her before.

And nobody had to know about Europe. He would himself like to forget about it, along with everybody else.

He stood up unsteadily.

Ahead of him, Alphonse hesitated. A light breeze broke the heat.

"I don't remember anything, Brother," he said. In three years, his voice was older. Deeper. "Maybe she will. And you certainly need the help."

In three years, Ed put things in his heart that he wouldn't ever take out again. Eight years.

"I don't need any help!" he yelled. Al kept walking, and didn't stop.

In the slight retrospect of a few seconds, yelling something like that probably meant the opposite. But did his brother really think that he would tell Winry what he was hiding from him?

_I've fixed you, Al, and I'm here. What more do you want? _

Or was it what he wanted for himself instead? And what was that? Redemption? Some companionship in memory? Or maybe his brother's face, fully aware of five years of searching for the Philosopher's Stone and alive, screaming, with thankfulness for his body. Or maybe something he couldn't yet describe.

He clenched his fists, and looked up at the sky. Winry was marooned in Rush Valley, and she could stay that way. Their tickets were to Central.

_I know what and who we lost. We don't need two to do that job. Or three. _

Blue-black, with stars pricking the darkness. A half-moon haloed the clouds around it.

"_Isn't it silly to look up at the sky and believe someone else is looking at it, too? The one you want to be looking at it?"_ Her eyes laughed.

Winry, back in Resembol, on the balcony at one-thirty at night after his lastest reinstallment surgery. Her hair was so long before she cut it.

It would have been silly, because he really wasn't looking at the same sky.

He wondered if anyone he'd left behind on the other side of the Gate missed him, and then wondered why he cared.

_The one you want to be looking?_

In front of him, the sidewalk stretched over a hill. He couldn't see his brother anymore. The buildings on both sides of the dusty road loomed dark and heavy, old. Xenotime hadn't changed much. He wanted to know when the trees would grow back.

Inside him, something dark and heavy loomed. He blinked, slowly.

_Take care of each other._

He thought he felt a raindrop fall on his head; but that was silly, there weren't enough clouds. He looked up at the stars, and wondered who else looked along with him.

_Give my love to your brother, when you see him. _

He cried out, softly, choking on dry tears. _Dad._

He remembered why he'd gotten drunk in the first place. Russell, spewing happy reminisces about his brilliant father, just like Roy Mustang spewing bullshit.

He rubbed his face, and felt like throwing up again. Winry couldn't fix someone like him. She had other things to worry about. She couldn't possibly fix him. You can't just fix a person, like an arm or a leg or a car, because you can't see the space – the roar, the thunder – inside him, and you can't hear it, and you can't make it go away.

_My name is Alfons Heidrich. What's yours?_

_Edward Elric. _

His brother didn't know anymore how to lead his life. So now he searched for nothing.

_I hate this. _

He chased, as best a drunk could manage, after his brother.

**

* * *

**_And then you bring me home  
__Afraid to find out you're alone_ **

* * *

**

**A/N: **Yay for border lines!

Some **Did-You-Knows:**

When Fletcher says "your exact words to me were…" – yes, those are Al's exact words (in the official English version). "Take care of each other" and "I'll do whatever it takes to fix things" are also exact quotes (I think).

If you don't live in the Western Hemisphere (or is it the Northern Hemisphere?) – the Big Dipper is a real constellation. Just doesn't always go by that name.

Atlas is the name of the Greek god (godly person?) who holds up the earth. Points for really blatant metaphors.

Art history – a "rose window" is a giant circular stained glass window that you may see in some cathedrals.

If you didn't watch the movie and read this anyway, Alfons Heidrich is the European double of Alphonse Elric. (Hey! Go find all your FMA friends and have an FMA movie party! It's finally out in the US!)


	3. 03 The Automotive Accident

**Disclaimer: **I have no claim on anything FMA or Something Corporate.

**Spoilers: **It's chapter 3 now, so I guess you've already figured what happens at the end of the series, or it wouldn't be a spoiler. Also, Winry's parents' killer is revealed.

**A/N: **It's funny – I started this fic before school started, and now I'm returning after it's ended. Been a while, eh? Plus I've rewritten this particular chapter about eight times. Visit my profile for the link to hear "Konstantine" by Something Corporate!

**

* * *

****Living Room Space**

**TerraCotta Bones**

**

* * *

****Chapter 3: The Automotive Accident**

* * *

_And I'm sleeping in your living room  
__But we don't have much room  
__To live_

* * *

Winry's face was pressed flat against the surface of the plastic café table, if not for the slight coolness than her fatigue. The small, flitting movements of the lunch crowd came to her as if from a distance, or through a heavy curtain.

Coffee was too hot to drink at this time of day. It was summer in Rush Valley. The only thing that bloomed and fruited was sluggishness, from the tree of unrelenting heat.

And the only way to compensate was to adjust your schedule – nap in the middle of the day and stay out later at night. Winry worked longer hours, but at this point it was hard to discern exhaustion from lack of sleep, and exhaustion from weather. The café table was as close as she would come to a bed, or comfort.

Half-asleep, she dreamed of Resembol – of a bedroom in the attic with wrenches, nuts, bolts, scrap pieces of metal, books and blueprints scattered over the scratched wooden floor. She could hear the sound of Granny Pinako in the workshop through the floorboards. The bed under the window sill hosted a heap of white blankets, pillows and sheets, and if she ran and jumped on them from a long way away, she would bounce.

Outside the window, as far as the eye could see, green hills rolled out in one direction, and forest in the other. Sometimes a patch of slowly-moving white would appear in the green – sheep, grazing the fields. The mountains rose in greens, blues, purples, and browns. The sky was a wonderful light blue, as if the world expanded up and up until it hit a blue ceiling. The air was warm; humid, but not sweltering; and, with a wind, smelled alternately of apples or livestock.

After twenty-two hours on the job, most other interns would've have slogged their way back to their apartments. Winry slept on café tables and gurneys, or standing near the coffee machine in the lounge.

_One day I'll go back, and you'll be proud, Granny. _

Until then, the days were hot, and she learned how to function on fewer hours of sleep. It was not as hard as her mind made it seem at three in the morning, in the shower, or at the bar.

She dreamed of Saturday night, and mirrors, and curled a fist.

One day, the glass in the mirror would just be glass. She would wake up in the morning and wash her face, brush her teeth, do her make-up. Her hair would not be limp or bleached; her skin would not be burned and pale at the same time; she would not see the wounded, toneless gold swimming in the blue of her eyes. Edward Elric would not grow and live inside her every expression; his picture would not pull at her bones and tendons and heart. He would no longer rule her life.

In a little while, the photo in her bedroom would become inaccurate. She would distort him without meaning to, and when she saw him again – in a year, or two years, or four – it would be with surprise.

Winry wondered if she would remember her parents' faces if their photographs didn't remind her every day. She wondered, had she known their names when they died? Had she known their names, or were they just Mom and Dad?

Once, Al burst through the Rockbell door a suit of armor, with Ed half the boy he used to be. A strange feeling, rank and sour, had been brooding in her gut all evening, ever since the scream. If she'd been a blind girl, it would have been easier.

She hadn't heard Al's voice in over a year; she had missed it. But that's all she'd had to go on.

What an awful way to recognize a best friend.

The sound of a siren passed outside the café. Winry sighed, sat up and stared groggily at her salad. It looked wilted.

No one she'd ever known had been wasted on her. Even Roy Mustang, the General, the revolutionary, the bullet that killed her parents – even he was not wasted.

Even if memory was a cage, even if memory was just one more road backward, love made everything more important. Winry watched her hand tremble around her fork. She tipped her chair back and shielded her eyes from the sun with one arm.

_Shielding my eyes from the sun. _She'd never seen metaphors so unexpectedly before.

It occurred to her that looking back was harder than looking forward, and that's why Ed had always kept going.

She rose from her seat, and picked up her purse. As she walked through the doors, back into the heat, she decided to go home. She would call the hospital after she got to her apartment, and then she would sleep, and not care about waking up. For the second time in a week, she was drunk, stumbling into oblivion. This time, her poison was a white and colorless sleep.

It seemed horribly selfless that another person's life should be worth more, and your life worth less, because you love them. It seemed selfish. Ed did it for Al, Al for Ed, and she for the both of them.

She wanted her life to fall down from the sky where it was lodged, to condense so that she could see it, smell it, touch it, hear it, taste it.

She wanted Ed to leave her alone, though the only Ed that ever bothered her was the one whom she imagined. She wanted to be done with dreaming.

She wanted to wake up, one day, to salvation. Her white sheets would have color; her picture frames would lose their pictures. She would leave everyone behind, and be reincarnated. She would skip the mistakes that in this life she was remiss enough to make.

She wanted to open her arms out wide, feel the sun blinding her, and burn, without thinking of him.

_

* * *

__But we don't have much room  
__To live_

* * *

Later, it hit her. 

Her apartment was only a few more streets away, but then she turned a corner – a metal supply truck screamed to a halt, skidding, huge, lethal, right on top of a little boy.

Winry's heart stopped midbeat.

The crowd on the street burst into chaos.

The boy's mother, hysterical, pushed wildly through to the street. The pitch of her screaming rose and rose, above all the noise, above her son's motionless body. Nothing could stop her.

Late at night, Winry would still hear the ring in her ears, still see the eyes wide and weeping in her mind, still feel the grip of the mother's hand in hers.

The poor woman looked like she was dying. Somehow, the expression was not unfamiliar.

Winry would hardly remember the time it took, in the aftershock, to push the people away and jump for the boy. She would hardly remember helping his mother pull him safely away from the tires, or yelling at the closest shopkeeper for an ambulance. She would hardly remember tying off the boy's crushed limbs or trying to keep him breathing and out of shock, or doing the same for his mother.

The ambulance came, and Winry was on it all the way to the hospital, with him all the way to the emergency room and through the needles and the surgery.

He was unconscious, which made it harder, and easier.

What she would not forget was his breathing, his mouth parting, the blood spilling from his lips.

Later, it hit her.

She had not felt the burn in her eyes when she inserted the IV, or the weight in her limbs when she lifted him to the ambulance, or how every moment was made in a debt to her body.

She'd seen it before, in a lonely house in the country.

Ed had not moved either. Had not twitched. His blood was everywhere. She'd spent days cleaning it off the floors. Granny's face had been white. Al couldn't even cry. He didn't even have a face.

And, curled up on a gurney in a dimly lit storage closet, something else hit her, too.

Ed and Al – they were the car crash. They were the stumbling, too-fast speed of the wheels and the gravelly grumble of the ground underneath them, the widening of the driver's eyes, the reflexive swerve, the lightning slam on the brakes, the jerk forward, the collision, the thud of human on metal, the burn of human on heat, the crack of the skull and the rip through the skin, the crush of the bones, the rending of tendons, the spraying of blood, the scream; and the driver running out, thinking faster and slower than he ever has in his life, the heart beat, the too-clear vision, that horrible, gut-wrenching awareness; the static, background noise of the crowd, of panic and life and death and screaming. Screaming, and collision. That's what she remembered. And that's what Ed and Al were, right now, in her mind.

She could feel the truck barreling down without slow or stop, and squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart throbbed too high in her chest to be a heart, and she wanted to step out into the street to let the collision come, feel the rush and the blackness and not just the blood on her shirt.

Hers was a life eclipsed by the threat of impact.

Even her hands over her face didn't erase the images of that boy's body, though like a child she thought they would help.

_

* * *

__I had these dreams that I might learn to play guitar  
__Maybe cross the country  
__Become a rock star_

* * *

The bottom of the stairs was dark, cool, swirling with dizzy fatigue. After so long in the hospital, home wasn't so much a light in a living room any more, not so much a concrete staircase to a blue door, or a gleaming picture frame on an end table. It was solid, exhausted sleep; escape; a bed with white covers. 

In the wobbly, crying space between a yawn and a collapse, Winry trudged up the stairs to her apartment, eyes half-closed, too tired to move her brain past the steps in front of her. She heard wailing in the silence – a crowd, some young mother, the little boy under the truck – and if she'd had the energy she would've wished it to go away. If she'd had the energy—

She paused in the middle of the staircase, breathed, squeezed her eyes closed, opened them.

At least her bed was dreamless.

If she'd had the energy, she might've imagined – but the dark space between a yawn and a collapse took her too far to think, to dream, to paint piecemeal in her mind that little picture in her bedroom. If she could've, she would've dreamed.

He was smiling in the photo. So was she.

But she only had the energy for that one thought.

_

* * *

__And there was hope in me_

* * *

—If she'd had the energy, she would've paid attention. 

There were voices floating from above.

She put her hand on the rail, closed her eyes, and kept walking. The first thing that came to mind, after the dark and drowsy shadows faded, was long green grass, and a breeze.

"Brother, she's probably asleep. We should go to a hotel."

Chives, moss, onion stalks in the fields, turnip leaves in the stew, watermelons, oak trees, frogs in a pond, green green grass—

_

* * *

__That I could take you there_

* * *

—"She works at a hospital, remember? People who work at hospitals never sleep." 

She stumbled a little, but her eyes barely opened.

"Exactly. So if she is here, then she's not going to want to wake up at two in the morning to let us into her house."

She was dreaming, not-dreaming, of Resembol. Long green grass. There wasn't anything green in Rush Valley, only muddy-colored shrubs and sandy tumbleweed.

"She will let us in, right? I mean, if she's here?"

"Wrenches, Brother. Wrenches."

He'd been smiling.

It was her one thought.

She was tired enough to yawn, wobble, cry, and fall down on the concrete. The night air was warm, even for the desert. Her heart stretched his face in her mind, stretched lips and teeth and the apples in cheeks until he grinned like he always did—

_

* * *

__But damnit you're so young_

* * *

—"I can't believe this." 

In Resembol, she'd been full of dreams. Now her bed had white sheets, a white comforter, and white pillows. Resembol was only a strand of green grass to clean, white sleep – clean, white comforters and clean white tiles and the retching girl inside. Deep and dreamless sleep.

She heard wailing again.

"I can't believe this!"

It sounded like – but it couldn't be them. She was dreaming.

"Brother, be quiet! It's two in the morning!"

It was only a few more steps.

She didn't think it was in her head, but it was two in the morning, and she couldn't be sure.

"I know it's two in the morning! I wanna go to sleep! Where is that girl?"

If she'd had the energy, she would've tried to believe it—

_

* * *

__Well I don't think I care_

* * *

—She topped the last few steps. Ed had gone and ripped half his ponytail out, groaning. Then he turned around and— _

* * *

__And if I hurt you_

* * *

—"Winry!" 

Al spun around.

Gold and grey eyes, wide open and staring at her. She stared back, wondering how she kept her eyes open—

_

* * *

__Then I'm sorry_

* * *

—but they were standing on her doorstep at two in the morning on a Wednesday in August, and it had only been a few months, but she'd been afraid that it would be longer— 

"Winry," they gasped together.

Healthy blonde heads, flesh and blood and Elric.

She dropped her purse, and hugged them.

"Winry," they gasped, softer, together.

* * *

_Please don't think that this was easy_

* * *


	4. 04 Heart of Armor

**Disclaimer: **I love Fullmetal Alchemist too much to even pretend to own it.

**A/N: **There's so many witty things I could say…but I think I'll just dedicate this to my very good friend, Devon, who makes the world a more amazing place every day. ;)

* * *

**Living Room Space**

**TerraCotta Bones**

**Chapter 4: Heart of Armor**

* * *

_Then you bring me home  
'Cause we both know what it's like to be alone

* * *

_

"I can't believe she's taking a shower. I would have just gone to bed."

Al smiled wryly and slid into the plastic seat opposite his brother at Winry's breakfast table. "And that's what separates you from civilized company, Brother."

Edward shot him a pointed look and took a long drag from one of the mugs of tea Winry had brewed for them. "Sometimes you have to prioritize. Sorry if I might choose to save myself from collapse over hygiene."

"She did look like she was about to faint," Al conceded. He ran a finger on the rim of his mug. "Never seen someone look so tired."

Ed yawned. "We're not going to wait up for her to finish her shower, are we?"

"It might be more polite if we did."

"But it's Winry – I'm sure she'd understand."

Al was dogged. "I'm sure she'd find it offensive that we couldn't wait the few minutes for her to take a shower after barging in on her at one in the morning."

Sighing in a disappointed fashion, Ed's gaze fell upon an old clock perched on the wall. "Two in the morning, actually. Wish she'd hurry up." He took another swig of tea and, only for something to do, pulled an old newspaper off the counter and started to read.

The paper was a local one, and filled, predictably, with articles in which only locals would be interested. A new library had opened near the center of the town; a team of automail mechanics working in a cooperative workshop had developed some new cooling system; a little kid had saved a cat from the top of a roof by tying a fake mouse onto the end of a fishing pole and casting it up next to the cat, then drawing the line in until the cat jumped.

He stopped reading after a while, without noticing. Winry's kitchen gave off the faint, automated buzz he associated with boredom, and the sound of mosquitoes in the dead of summer.

As his gaze drifted listlessly, he saw the walls were yellow, the linoleum floor was rising and warping with age, and the hanging copper ceiling lamp was streaked with green. The cupboards looked like the patchy faces of old men – run-down, uneven, and discolored with liver spots. Ed guessed that they would squeak and groan when opened. The counters were lined with jars of spices, flour, sugar, and a tin of coffee next to a coffee machine. A small, red-painted radio sat on a corner. Everything was scrubbed and clean. Ed had to smile when he saw that the cleanest appliance was the oven – shiny and spotless.

Turning back to his paper, he knew that he would be digesting no new articles tonight. The tiny print blurred every time he blinked.

"Nice place she's got here," Al said.

Ed watched his brother curl a hand around the mug of hot tea Winry had made. What little hands he had, it seemed. He rested his chin on his palm. "Really small though. I wonder if she's even got a workshop in here."

He pictured himself walking through a half-closed door to see Winry hard at work with a hack saw. She would have her purple jumpsuit, her orange handkerchief, her long hair.

His stomach growled. They would have to eat pie at some point during this stop. He thought of the sweet red cherries of the Resembol orchards, and sighed.

"Do you think she has the time to make automail, working at the hospital and all?" Al mused jokingly.

Ed snorted. "Winry Rockbell always has time to make automail. Taken a look around you yet?"

It was true. Something resembling parts of an arm littered the counter, and a cardboard box full of gears lay by the door to the living room. What looked like a half-finished mechanical bird sat on the tabletop. A loose screwdriver and a toolbox and a series of metal trinkets sprinkled the counter, the table, the chairs, the floors. Everywhere they looked, something metal gleamed dimly.

Al chuckled a little. "Good old Winry." He took another drink. "I've never seen anyone look more tired in my life."

"It _is_ almost two in the morning. Damn late trains," Ed added.

Al nodded, agreeing. For a minute, they sat and drank their tea, and tried not to drift off. It was hard, in the silence. Their butts and bones ached from riding too long on the stiff seats of an aging, clanking train. Ed closed his eyes, only for a moment, but in that second the buzz of the copper lamp, the tick of the clock, and the creaking sound of a small, old Rush Valley kitchen transformed.

Ed's mind flickered. He heard heavy footsteps, and the sound of frying; he smelled the cheddar, green onions and butter of his father's omelettes. If he only opened his eyes, if he only listened a little longer, he might hear his voice—

"Look," Al said, pointing.

Briefly disoriented, Ed looked around. Hanging in a frame on the wall was a cut-out from the Central Post – an article entitled, "MIA Alchemist and Hero of the People Returns."

He begrudged his brother a scowl, and stood up to wash his cold tea down the sink. "That's great."

He could feel Al's eyes in the back of his head, and so kept his gaze low as he sat back down.

"Wish Winry had some food," he muttered. "I could eat a horse."

"You can always eat a horse, Brother. It's when you can eat an elephant that we start to think about food." Al paused. "Are you going to tell her why we're here?"

It was ironic that Ed had searched for the key to restoring Al's body for so long, and now all he could do was look away. He didn't say anything.

"Then I guess I will."

Ed drew his mouth into a tight line. How could Al have the energy to argue now? "We just got here, Al. Give the girl a break."

"Why? She's not stupid, Brother. She'll figure it out." Al stared at him so hard it made him uncomfortable.

_Figure what out?_ Ed wanted to say. And if she did, did Al think he was going to tell her anything? Certainly not.

"Ed, some day you're going to burst."

His brother's voice rang in his head, clear. "You don't understand," he muttered.

"Understand what?" Al snapped. "And how would you know?"

Ed shifted in his seat. He felt old, and tired, and disgusting, like he had just thrown up all over the floor. "Because you're my brother." Because you understood once, and now you don't have to anymore.

"And youdon't think I can handle it, _Brother?" _

"You already paid your price, Al." When he looked at his brother, Ed saw a little boy. When he looked away, he saw a suit of armor with Al's voice, and somehow they had the same expression.

Al slammed his fists on the table top, a sharp thud in the silence of Winry's kitchen. Ed jumped. "What price, Brother? What did I pay it for?"

"Al," Ed murmured at the floor, "I can't."

_You gave me my life back, Al, with your own. _But where had that gotten them?

Al scoffed, stood up abruptly, and brought his mug to the sink. His face smoldered. "When I met your old military unit, they told me that we would've sacrificed our lives for each other. And now you don't even trust me with the truth."

Al glared at him for an instant with wild grey eyes, then stalked out of the room.

"Al!" Ed yelled. He heard Al open his suitcase and rummage through it. He felt the space inside him shudder, tremble. _We did sacrifice our lives for each other. _"I was trying to bring you back," he mumbled. Three years – that was the price for his little brother's anger. Three years in a nightmare where he lived and dreamed and searched – and now he was home, where things were distinctly different from his dreams.

That ballroom was so old and decrepit that it started tumbling down on him only seconds after the transmutation circle started to glow, only seconds after he felt the reaction run through his mind, only seconds after the power began to course through his body. It was like drowning, he recalled, while the sky fell down from above. It was like drowning in an ocean, with the current crashing onto his lungs and smashing his head against the rocks. He had believed, at that point, that he was going to die.

He'd already died once, looking into his half-brother's face.

He'd only wanted to bring Al back. It seemed a fair trade.

Then the Gate wrenched him through, and he woke up to mud, then a hospital and his father's wrinkled face.

He dipped his face into his arms on Winry's kitchen table, tucked his feet under Winry's chair, and tried to stop the tremors rolling through his chest.

* * *

_And I'm dreaming in your living room_

_But we don't have much room _

_To live

* * *

_

He was having a dream.

It was a whirl of colors, and he woke up to Winry shaking his arm. He couldn't remember what he'd been dreaming.

"Silly," she said as he rubbed his eyes, "you can't sleep there. I put pillows on the couch for a reason."

_I was having a dream._ He yawned, still hunched over the table. "Oh, yeah. Thanks."

He felt like he was underwater, and groggy. He was a fish, gasping. Winry swam into his vision like a reflection; she was the girl sitting on the dock, staring down at him, while he looked up at her from under the rippling surface.

She glistened in the lamplight, all glowing skin and dripping wet blonde hair. Her pink robe made her cheeks look rosy. She reminded him of something, outlined in incandescence, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"You cut your hair again," he noted offhand.

She smiled like a school girl. "Yeah. Do you like it?"

He tilted his head, concluding, "It'll grow back." She puffed up in consternation, but he ignored her. "You should go to bed yourself," he continued, stumbling as she shoved him toward the dark living room.

"My hair is wet, I can't go to bed." He heard her add, under her breath, "I can't believe you don't like my hair."

Her hair, along with the rest of her, had brought him through three years of rocketry, of hopelessness, of Hohenheim and Alfons.

"However you like it, Winry."

She gave a dramatic sigh. "I don't know, maybe I'll dye it black or something."

He chuckled, and, distracted in the darkness, crashed his flesh knee into the coffee table corner. In the crossfire, he bit his tongue. Hard.

"Damnit!"

He sank onto the couch, hand on mouth and toe, and glowered at Winry's brief burst of giggles. "Why do I even have an automail knee in the first place if I'm gonna be bangin' the other one into stuff?! Fuck, this is useless."

"Hey! Automail saved your butt, so shut your mouth." She flicked on a lamp and ambled over. "You dummy, if you haven't learned to see in the dark by now, you should turn on a light first. Then you might not dent my automail."

He glared at her over the cage of his fingers on his jaw. She wasn't fazed – as usual – and sat down next to him.

"Strong boy like you wouldn't be hurt by a little coffee table, would you?"

He flung his hands off his stinging body parts and crossed his arms. "Jeez, you could at least be concerned. It's freaking two o'clock in the morning. You're not the most graceful blade in the tool shed either, so there."

He imagined her answering with her standard caustic wit, saw the wrench flying out, and could even feel the welt on his head before it happened.

But she just murmured, in an exhausted fashion, "Three in the morning, actually."

He sighed, deflated. She was in silhouetted in front of the lamp, shining at the edges. And, studying her, he realized something.

_Give my love to your brother, when you see him._

He slapped a hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying out, then squeezed his eyes shut.

Winry shook him. "Ed, what's wrong? What's wrong?"

It was only for an instant – he didn't know why it came to mind – the flash, the alarm, the lights and buzz, flaring like an explosion in his head – but for an instant all he saw was his father's silhouette leaning over him, and his father's smile instead of hers, and the light of the transmutation circle on the ceiling instead of Winry's living room lamp, and screaming, screaming, screaming in his ears; his mouth was full of screaming and the blood was a cascade over him, a silhouette of his father, his smiling father and _the transmutation circle_—

_Give my love ­_– he ran it through his mind in a stutter – _to your brother, when you see him. _

When he opened his eyes, Winry had her hand poised to touch his face. He flinched and drew away at her proximity, and she withdrew.

"What was that?" She looked unnerved.

He stared at his brother, across from him on the other couch and sound asleep. "I don't know." _Hey, Al!_ he wanted to say. _I have something to tell you._

"Ed!"

He wouldn't look at her. He couldn't.

She took a breath. "Did you just – what happened?"

"I can't really describe it to you so you'd understand."

She punched him in the arm.

"Ow! Winry!"

"Don't bullshit me, Edward. You've been giving me that crap since you were ten years old, now grow up."

She was stern, but when he didn't respond to her red-faced glare – her typical red-faced glare – she crossed her arms and moved to the far end of the sofa. "Take your shoes off before you put your feet on my couch."

He smiled a little, because she was acting like him. His boots clattered to the floor with a sharp thud somewhere on the left when he kicked them off.

"Go to bed, Winry," he grumbled, stuffing his face into a pillow.

But she didn't. He waited to feel the cushion rise and to hear her pad down the hall to her bedroom, but there was nothing.

"It's three in the morning."

She stood up and he thought she might leave, but she just spread a blanket over him and sat back down. "Thanks. It was killing me not knowing."

He sighed exasperatedly. "Whatever."

She let him be, and after a while he fell asleep.

He had another dream, another disturbed whirl of color that he wouldn't be able to define or recall later. He woke up when he felt the cushions move; it was Winry, sitting down with some mechanical whats-it in her hand.

"Hey, Ed."

He sighed gustily to signify a response. Why was she even still there?

"Mind if I ask you something?"

To that, he only groaned.

She waited a moment, fidgeting. If he'd had the energy, he would've rolled his eyes. She continued, "What are you doing here?"

He felt the air pause in his chest, felt his façade puncture at her words. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like I mean. It's not really your style to make courtesy calls, or go on vacations, or even visit me at all unless you've been shot or beaten up—" she paused and he waited for her to say, _Or if you've been gone for three years_, "but you don't _look_ beaten up or anything."

He just wanted to curl up and go to sleep; he didn't care if she sat there and watched him until he woke up in the morning. He couldn't tell her anything.

_I promised you a good life, Winry. I won't ruin it._

"I don't know, Winry. Ask that one." He flung his hand out in the direction of his brother on the couch across from them. "Maybe you'll get it even if I don't." Dangerous territory. She raised her eyebrows.

"Are you guys having a fight?"

She'd said that once before, long ago.

Ed shrugged. "Here's a better question – why won't you let me sleep? Go the hell to bed, you lunatic."

She slapped his leg, and he flinched.

"Hey!"

"Hey yourself. Just tell me why you're here. I'm not attacking you or anything, so just tell me."

He took another deep breath, and perhaps he drifted away for a second, staring at the back of his eyelids and finding her face there the way he wanted to see it. Passionate and sixteen.

His voice, when it finally came out, was gruff, and tired. "You're here," he said. He could just hear her surprise. "And we missed you."

_Even though you left us. _

As the seconds ticked on and she didn't say anything, he thought the interrogation over and started to fall back asleep. Then, through the daze, he felt her hand on his ankle. Even with vision bleary from half-sleep, he saw her thrown expression, and the over-brightness in her eyes.

He blinked, and rubbed his eyes. "Winry—"

Why was she always so emotional?

He was too tired for this.

Even through his exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, he had the idea to take hold of her hand. It looked wanting and lonely on his ankle. And it seemed like a good idea to take hold of it, so he did.

"Edward, you're such an idiot," she murmured. Color blazed in her cheeks. She smiled ruefully, and bit her lip. "I was worried you wouldn't come back. It's stupid, I know, but most of the time years go by before I see you again."

He drew back his hand, and felt sick to his stomach.

The first time, a suit of armor with Al's hollow voice brought half of a ten-year-old boy to her door.

Every time after that he'd lost the use of his arm, or he was in the hospital, or he was getting ready to die. That last time, Schieska was in full hysterics at the train station, and Winry just stood there, watching him go like she wanted to believe he would come back.

"You just came back from that place—" she drew a long breath and continued, "— wherever it was, and it's been three years – and I thought that maybe—"

He didn't know what to do. Somehow, he should do something, shouldn't he? But she was being herself again, and he didn't know what to do. He never had.

"I had to leave," she finished. "I had to come back to Rush Valley. It's my life. But every day is just one more towards a month, and every month is just another towards a year and after that – I was just…worried. And all I did was go home."

She made a nervous laughing sound, as if embarrassed with herself. Ed said nothing. He remembered being angry with her, though he hadn't admitted it. He was ashamed, because she didn't deserve it.

"I guess I'll let you get some sleep now." She bent forward to take her gadget from the table, and turned back to him. "Good night."

How strange, that after all these years she was almost the same girl, and how strange that in his mind she was five years old, eleven years old, sixteen, nineteen. She was still Winry crying when he and Al transmuted her a doll; still the mechanic blisteringly angry when he came back with broken automail; still the beacon, the shining reminder, for a life loved and lost; still the girl with a blazing heart, who demanded that he be as healthy and wholesome as any other man in the world. Looking at her now – even with a red nose, she was much prettier than she used to be, before he left for purgatory and the Gate. Her face had a nice shape; her hair was newly cut and shiny. Even her robe couldn't cover the supple, easy curves of her body.

The lamp illuminated her from behind, like a sunset glow on a house you've lived in all your life and never want to leave. You can burn it down, but even after years go by you can still return to that spot of grass and say, "This is where I lived."

He stared at her, no fire at all, no armor and red coat.

"I'm glad you came," she said as she departed. "Sleep well."

Her eyes were a perfect, deep and pacific blue. Edward's heart lurched, surprising him. "Good night," he said.

* * *

_And Konstantine came walking down the stairs  
Doesn't she look good_

_Standing in her underwear

* * *

_

As Al rose from the couch, showered, dressed, and discovered Winry's note in the kitchen, he pondered over waking Ed. He thought about asking – again – about state alchemists, Maes Hughes, homunculi, and Scar, but then pictured Ed's diffuse and unresponsive stare and decided to find Winry. Hospital or no, she'd always been more reliable. He could only hope that in so many months she hadn't changed as much as his brother.

Rummaging around Winry's kitchen produced toast and marmalade, and Al leaned against the door post to chew, slowly, and stare at his brother.

"You know this is worse for you than for me," he quipped, pausing to gauge a reaction and, seeing none, continuing. "The desert's got to get the truth out of you."

Ed, ignorant, slept. Al almost wanted him to wake up, but remained confined to the door and the toast. It was warm, crunchy, and sweet in his mouth, and he wondered where Rush Valley acquired its marmalade.

_I think you should go home._

"It doesn't get any better than this, Brother!" He waved his free arm around like a madman. Ed snored. Al sighed.

"This is just like arguing with you when you're awake."

Back in the kitchen, he noted the proliferation of dirty dishes, and set to washing them. It had been a long time since he had washed any dishes. He teased a small glass out from under a stack of plates. The last time he'd washed dishes, Teacher had handed him a single dish to dry before giving him one of her fearsome stares, and telling him to get off to bed – he had had a long day to look forward to in the morning.

Amazing, how much memory a plain wet plate could hold. It was only a piece of ceramic thrown into a disk, a bit of glaze and paint, and a few spurts of the faucet. That's all it was. And now Izumi stood blaring in his mind, ordering him to get out of her house and go find his brother.

"She's gone."

It was like he had just gotten the news, like he'd just had the sinking realization that he would never be able to see her again. If only Winry had a cat, so he wouldn't have to talk to himself anymore.

He wondered what it would be like to be wordless, like Winry – to stand over his brother after a surgery with a reheated pot of soup and two bowls and be pensively, graciously silent – to be happy with looking, and with presence.

Long ago, he remembered she'd demanded information, simple information, to fill the void; she'd wanted to know what they were doing when they refused to play with her, when they did boy stuff, when they did alchemy.

Perhaps she found out, finally, and lost her curiosity. Perhaps Edward's ghosts haunted her as well.

But to be happy with mere presence – that was a desperate condition indeed. To be happy with silence – that was not something a normal person should do.

Alchemy, and science, was a way of life. One must always search for answers. One must be inclined to figure out how things work. _It's not stupid to ask questions if the answers aren't stupid, _Teacher had told them once.

He didn't ever want to have Winry's expression on his face.

He didn't want to see that expression on her face again either, the one she greeted them with as she'd hugged them. It was old, sad, pathetic: a wrench melted down to ore; a country house to ashes; a pair of living, breathing parents to a letter from a soldier; a mother to a grave – a tornado to a whisper in his ear, _"Welcome back." _She was not the girl he remembered.

Ed was now more cheekbone than cheek; more bone than meat; and more tough and thickened delicacy were once there'd been only a wash of proud and frowning baby fat. He was aging everything around him.

Al dropped a plate, and it splintered on its mates. He jumped at the crash, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

"Sorry, Winry," he said.

He finished the rest of the dishes and left a note of apology on a scrap of newspaper. On another scrap he wrote a note to his brother, placing it on the table.

Winry had left directions to the hospital.

He'd never been to Rush Valley before. They'd always met up in Resembol.

Al stared at the table, not seeing it, suddenly distraught.

_I miss you guys so much. _

His brother and friend were too quiet these days.

There was no way Winry could be satisfied with Ed's mere presence. There was no way. She would not have given up like that. She would never let him give up like that.

"You brought me back, Brother," he called as he shoved his feet into his shoes. "You brought me back." Softer now. "That's what I hear." Softer now. "Now I'm going to do the same for you." Softer again. "And I won't let you take Winry down with you."

The click of the door shutting was louder than his voice.

* * *

_And I was thinking_

_What I've been thinking

* * *

_

When Ed woke up, it was 4:13 in the afternoon.

No one had pulled open the curtains, but light diffused through the fabric as if it were only paper. Ed blinked, and drifted back and forth – through curtain light and darkness, curtain light and darkness, curtain light and his heart rate's steady increase, the feel of the air in the space inside his lungs.

Air is life. Air, he thought, was all he ever wanted.

He waited half an hour to let himself wake up slowly, and then tottered to the kitchen to eat everything in Winry's ice box that he didn't have to heat up to chew.

He didn't look around much. It was stifling inside the apartment, and the grind of his teeth was a roar in the silence constructed of absence.

All he noticed was Al's note and the cut-out from The Central Post – "MIA Alchemist and Hero of the People Returns."

He chewed for a while more, staring at the picture with the article. The Colonel – the General – Roy Mustang – whatever – was shoving him into a car. Ed had looked over his automail shoulder into the photographer's camera, surprised.

Ed, in the kitchen, chewed.

In the picture, he was pale, unshaven, with bags under his eyes and a smattering of cuts and bruises all over his face. He looked not so much like an alchemist than a ghost of one, and he wondered if Winry had worried over it when she picked the paper up off the stands, or when she ate breakfast everyday on her way out to work.

When he was finished eating, he looked for her pictures.

There were two in the living room – one of Winry and Pinako in front of the Rockbell Automail sign in Resembol, and the other of Winry grinning with a group of dirty, heavily muscled mechanics in front of some shop in Rush Valley.

In the hallway, there was only one. Winry stood on the steps of an old porch with an umbrella raised above her head. Ed was sure the picture was taken in Rush Valley, yet it was raining.

Winry's expression was distractingly sober, and – he searched for the word – soulful.

He glared at the frame, and spun on his heel down the hall.

The only thing at the end of the corridor was her bedroom and the bathroom. There was nothing in the bathroom.

For a moment, he stood in front of her door, not quite debating, with his fingers on the knob. _Here is the Winry you never got to meet._

Here is three years when you didn't exist; here is five years when she was a stirring name from the past you wanted to leave behind. Here is eight years of a girl you've known since before you knew yourself, who grew up in your mind and in your heart, but not in front of your eyes.

After a few seconds, he opened the door.

He stood in its wake for a while, not quite debating, with his fingers by his side.

He went in, only for a bit, to look at the picture by her bed and glance around, then walked out and shut the door. Not quite debating, and coming to a decision, he walked to the living room, tied his shoes, stared at the curtains, picked up his suitcase, and closed the front door softly behind him.

If he whispered goodbye, no one heard him.

* * *

_We've been drinking_

_And it doesn't get me anywhere_


End file.
